Confirmed: Palantir raised a huge $450 million investment

Tristan Fewings/Getty ImagesPeter Thiel, Founders Fund in conversation with Caroline Daniel from the Financial Times on the Web Summit Centre Stage at the 2014 Web Summit on November 6, 2014 in Dublin, Ireland.

Palantir is a big-data company that can sift through vast amounts of data to find patterns, answer questions, and solve problems. It serves various government agencies including the military, law enforcement and spy agencies like the CIA and NSA. It also counts Wall Street financial firms, pharmaceutical firms and other big companies as clients.

Because it works on such sensitive projects, it has a reputation for being an extremely secretive company. It is said, for instance, that Palantir technology was used to help identify the Boston Marathon bomber suspects by sifting through videos and photos taken at the scene. It was also reportedly used by financial investigators to track Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

The company also has Silicon Valley royalty in pedigree. It’s co-founders include billionaire investor Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, who’s now leading the venture capital firm Formation 8.

We’ve reached out to Palantir for comment and will update if we hear back.

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